Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.

The remark cautions against the human tendency to retrofit tidy narratives onto behavior. Dostoyevsky’s fiction repeatedly shows that motives are mixed—pride entwined with shame, altruism with vanity, faith with rebellion—and that people often act from impulses they barely understand. The quote underscores a psychological and moral humility: explanations offered after the fact (by observers, institutions, or even by the actor) are simplifications that can conceal the true tangle of causes—social pressure, unconscious drives, chance encounters, and contradictory desires. It also hints at Dostoyevsky’s critique of rationalist systems that claim to “explain” human conduct through a single principle, reducing persons to theories rather than acknowledging their inner complexity.